Two men sentenced to death for gang-raping and killing a 23-year-old woman – an attack that jolted India with its brutality – spoke out publicly for the first time since their conviction saying they were innocent and worried about the effect of the sentence on their families.

Akshay Kumar Singh, a migrant bus helper, and Vinay Sharma, a gym assistant, responded in writing to questions posed to them by The Wall Street Journal through their lawyers.

Two other men were also convicted and given the death penalty earlier this month for the brutal December crime – in which a physiotherapy student was repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted with a metal bar. She later died.

Lawyers for all four men have said they will appeal.

"Now, there will be nobody to feed my family after my death,” wrote Mr. Singh, who sent home part of his 4,000-rupee, or U.S. $64, monthly salary to help support his wife, Punita Devi, and two-year-old son. “They will become living corpses." (The Journal published a story about Ms. Devi and the lives of rural women in India earlier this week.)

Judge Yogesh Khanna, when he sentenced the men to hang in mid-September, said their acts had “shocked the collective conscience” of India. He said the evidence showed the crime was premeditated and that the attackers had intended to kill the woman who died and her companion, who survived.

In their responses to the Journal, Messrs. Singh and Sharma said they were framed, and had been convicted due to political pressure surrounding the case.

Mr. Singh, echoing statements made by his lawyer, A.P. Singh, no relation, said the government had pursued the prosecution of the wrong men in an effort to dispose speedily of a case that sparked nationwide outrage. Mr. Sharma said he would ask the woman's family why they had framed him.

Neither man expressed regret about the crime.

"Shame on them," said S.R. Singh, a lawyer for the family of the victim. "After such an inhuman and ghastly act, they have the guts to point fingers at the family?" he asked. The lawyer rejected allegations that the woman's family prosecuted the wrong men out of pressure by the government.

Of the four convicts, only one, Mukesh Singh, has publicly expressed remorse about the rape. In trial testimony Mukesh Singh said the victim, her companion and he and his co-defendants were all on board the bus the night of the attack.

The three other convicts, Mr. Sharma, Mr. Singh and Pawan Gupta, a 19-year-old fruit seller, said they were elsewhere.

When asked what he would say to the victim's family if he ever met them, Mukesh Singh said he would say: "I'm sorry. I could not save her. Please forgive me if you can."

In his answers, 20-year-old Mr. Sharma said the loss of his earnings would make life difficult for his sisters. "I thought I would earn well and get them married in good homes," he said. Now, he said, he fears no one will want to marry his sisters after his conviction.

"I am suffering. My family is suffering. But what do I do? I can't even commit suicide out of grief now. If I do, people would think I was actually guilty," Mr. Sharma said.

The statements made by the convicts failed to elicit sympathy among women’s rights groups.

"They tortured and killed an innocent woman. And still they show no signs of repentance?" said Reena Banerjee, a New Delhi-based women's activist.

Ms. Banerjee said she had no compassion for the families of the two men. "They should have thought about their families -- their mothers, their wives, their sisters -- when they cold-bloodedly killed and raped the girl," she said. "It's too late now."

Corrections and Amplifications: A previous version of this post misspelled the word elicit as illicit. We apologize for the error.

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